Far Country, a — Volume 2 eBook

He did not rant. He seemed to have rather a remarkable
knowledge of the law. In a conversational tone
he described the sufferings of the man in the flannel
shirt beside him, but there could be no question of
the fact that he did produce an effect. The spectators
were plainly moved, and it was undeniable that some
of the judges wore rather a sheepish look as they
toyed with their watch chains or moved the stationery
in front of them. They had seen maimed men before,
they had heard impassioned, sentimental lawyers talk
about wives and families and God and justice.
Krebs did none of this. Just how he managed to
bring the thing home to those judges, to make them
ashamed of their role, just how he managed—­in
spite of my fortified attitude to revive something
of that sense of discomfort I had experienced at the
State House is difficult to say. It was because,
I think, he contrived through the intensity of his
own sympathy to enter into the body of the man whose
cause he pleaded, to feel the despair in Galligan’s
soul—­an impression that was curiously conveyed
despite the dignified limits to which he confined his
speech. It was strange that I began to be rather
sorry for him, that I felt a certain reluctant regret
that he should thus squander his powers against overwhelming
odds. What was the use of it all!

At the end his voice became more vibrant—­though
he did not raise it—­as he condemned the
Railroad for its indifference to human life, for its
contention that men were cheaper than rolling-stock.

I encountered him afterward in the corridor.
I had made a point of seeking him out, perhaps from
some vague determination to prove that our last meeting
in the little restaurant at the Capital had left no
traces of embarrassment in me: I was, in fact,
rather aggressively anxious to reveal myself to him
as one who has thriven on the views he condemned, as
one in whose unity of mind there is no rift. He
was alone, apparently waiting for someone, leaning
against a steam radiator in one of his awkward, angular
poses, looking out of the court-house window.

“How are you?” I said blithely. “So
you’ve left Elkington for a wider field.”
I wondered whether my alert cousin-in-law, George Hutchins,
had made it too hot for him.

He turned to me unexpectedly a face of profound melancholy;
his expression had in it, oddly, a trace of sternness;
and I was somewhat taken aback by this evidence that
he was still bearing vicariously the troubles of his
client. So deep had been the thought I had apparently
interrupted that he did not realize my presence at
first.

“Oh, it’s you, Paret. Yes, I’ve
left Elkington,” he said.

“Something of a surprise to run up against you
suddenly, like this.”

“I expected to see you,” he answered gravely,
and the slight emphasis he gave the pronoun implied
not only a complete knowledge of the situation and
of the part I had taken in it, but also a greater rebuke
than if his accusation had been direct. But I
clung to my affability.